Time: 15 minutes, 44 seconds

Bomb (BOM – bill of materials):
1. Over a ton of concrete (3690 pounds)
2. 27 frosh
3. Contents of p plant
4. Tires
5. Remote control system to start the ride
6. Hell carpeting
7. Several tubs of gelatin
8. Water tight container
9. A lifetime supply of tennis balls
10. Contents of e-waste
11. Black spray paint
12. Almost all of the hovse’s screws

Planning for our hellride started very early on, back in week 6 of first term, and we were pretty excited for it. Several locations for hellride were discussed, including the hyperspace above the lounge and Kit’s room (B55). We tentatively decided on the lounge hyperspace, as the idea of holding hellride in the drainage system hadn’t yet occurred to us. Even before we knew where exactly we were going to hold it, we had already started amassing pallets, wood, and other obstacles from dumpsters. Out first plan was to to hold hellride when daylight savings time began, which would have been the March 8/9th interface. However, that was the weekend of men’s trip, so this plan was abandoned.
At a much later time (near the beginning of 2nd term), we held another sketchy frosh meeting. At this meeting, the drainage system was brought up as a possible location. We had heard passing remarks from upperclassmen about the courtyard being used for Hell Ride, and decided to be the first class in a while to go for it.

2/23
Another sketchy frosh meeting was held. We were a week away from the date we decided on and there had been no progress at all on hellride, other than the fact that a few people had gone and gotten 6 cinderblocks and 6 bags of concrete, which was not nearly enough for a proper barricade. At this meeting, we decided who would be in charge of getting what done, finally ironing out all the details to make a solid plan.

[INSERT PLAN HERE]

2/24
Since most of our collected wood pallets had been smashed during bitterness day, our Valentine’s Day event, we made multiple trips to p-plant to get generic crap from the dumpster for our circles of crap. As we were picking out usable pieces of material, we were told by someone in one of the offices that we could take a pile of things. As it turned out, the “pile of things” she had pointed to was a stack of 4 lab bench tops. These things are supposed crack resistant, impact resistant, heat resistant, chemical resistant, and bacteria resistant. We eagerly (and tiredly) hauled them into the courtyard. However, as it turned out, we weren’t supposed to have taken them after all, so people from p plant ended up hauling them back, with no harm done except to our pride.

2/28
Since the current seniors had ran into problems with housing finding their defenses a day early, we decided to start the suspicious, construction heavy parts after the housing walk through on Friday morning. Frosh rebellion was also originally planned for today. However, since it was supposed to rain all weekend, we decided that we should hold hellride on the Monday – Tuesday interface instead, so that the concrete could have an extra day to dry. This meant that if housing saw our defenses and told us to get rid of them, we would have 24 hours to do so, after which Hell Ride would be over anyway and it wouldn’t be a problem.
The work started that day included placing the speakers in the drain and pouring the first batch of concrete that would eventually form a large, 2-ton weight on top of the drain that our speaker system was in.
We also ended up holding frosh rebellion tonight, since that was what was planned. Unfortunately, our frosh rebellion was not as cool as last year’s frosh rebellion, as no one assassinated the president or rappelled down into the dining hall. It was very effective at causing enough chaos that dinner just could not continue, though. We had all frosh waiters that night, so we could get away with pretty much anything, as long as we took a nasty dump. After we announced hellride with a chain announcement, a frosh turned off the lights, after which chaos ensued. During the entire dinner, we had been throwing things and shooting water guns. Once the lights turned off, water balloons and flour were thrown, nerf guns were fired, and eventually, the ride was played from the library.

3/1 – 3/2
California picked the worst weekend to rain. Thankfully, the first layer of concrete did dry by Saturday night, despite sitting in a large puddle almost all day (we found out that the drain we had chose and then blocked with concrete was actually fairly important for courtyard drainage. Who would’ve guessed?). Since the Saturday – Sunday interface was Drop Day, we poured the rest of the concrete Sunday morning. Once it was poured, we began attaching wood and other things we pulled out of p plant around the side of our concrete block. This took up most of Sunday and Monday. To fill up space, since the pieces of wood we had were not very standard, we put various things, such as the entire contents of e waste in one corner, left over pieces of frosh project in another, and a lifetime supply of tennis balls in a third. We continued using impact drivers, hammers, and drills very late into the night. Eventually, Sonal, one of our RA’s, told us to stop using tools, since it was 5 am. At this point, we proceeded to add on anything we could that didn’t require power tools (this included various phrases spray painted on), and then we all went to bed, except for Talia, who stayed awake and in the lounge to deal with housing when they walked through. As it turned out, housing never walked through (or, if they did, they never said anything).

3/3
We gradually attached the rest of the things we salvaged from p plant. Some time today, we started running out of the long screws, so we started using nails. The gelatin also went on, covering a lot of the wood with a layer of slime. At around 10, we took a break, noting how similar our hellride looked like the barricade from Les Miserables and proceeding to stand atop it and blast “Do You Hear the People Sing?”. The intended start time was 11:11 pm on Monday. At that time, however, some of the upperclassmen were following Harrison and Kit around. This was problematic because Harrison was supposed to turn on the Ride via remote control, then hand it over to Kit, who was supposed to protect the remote from upperclassmen. They eventually talked to the upperclassmen, who agreed not to turn off the Ride by tackling Kit and Harrison, since that ruined the spirit of hellride. We had sent out an email to the hovse earlier with some rules, such as don’t touch anything until the Ride starts playing, since the Smore class had problems with upperclassmen being in places they weren’t supposed to be before the Ride started. It is also to be noted that we, the frosh, did not get nasty dumped, as the waiters decided it just discouraged frosh from participating in frosh rebellion.

3/3, around 11:15 pm
The Ride finally starts playing. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very loud. The only way to hear it was to put your ear very close to one of the other drains. The original plan was to hold hellride in the drainage system so that the noise would spread to the rest of the courtyard and be audible, and it was good to know that this aspect had worked.. After the upperclassmen pulled off most of the pieces of wood and the concrete block was showing, Yurko got his car and attempted to pull our 1+ ton of concrete away. The only problem was, his car was’t quite heavy enough. The Moles reconverged, taking off almost all of the wood that was attached to the concrete, and then tried again with the car (and more people in it, this time).  Only after a lot of upperclassmen piled into his car could he get the concrete block to move. Thus, after almost 16 minutes of the Ride gloriously playing did the upperclassmen shut it off successfully. In hindsight, we should have put rebar down the drain, to make it almost impossible to just tow the concrete block away. We had discussed this possibility before, but we never got around to getting rebar, and decided that the risk of accidentally pouring concrete down the drain was too high. In addition, the rebar might damage the drain if the concrete block is moved.

3/3, around midnight – whenever the courtyard stopped looking like a war zone
So after hellride ended, because the upperclassmen ended the ride without breaking the massive concrete block, it was up to the frosh to dispose of this lovely new piece of decoration we got. After working all night on trying to break up the block, we eventually decided to cover up the concrete block and put a sign on it, saying seniors only, pretending it was something for ditch day. Work on this continued the next night. And the next. Until finally, we got the concrete into small enough pieces that we could put them all into tubs that we could theoretically just dump it into a dumpster. A few minor problems remained – we managed to cover most of the courtyard in a lovely shade of concrete gray, and we still had a couple extremely heavy tubs filled with concrete rubble in the courtyard. These problems were fixed over time with the use of our power washer and mole-swole, respectively.

Overall, our hellride was one of the most successful in recent history. Although we failed to hold an infinite hellride, and our speakers were a bit weak, we held out for a wonderful 15 minutes and 44 seconds.

-Bella Guo,
Historian, ‘17

PS As for pictures/video, I don’t know much about that, but maybe Moya/Yanwen/other historians know more. [Note from Talia – there a bunch of great picture on Titanic now]